"Resolved" Anyone had experience with barracuda 7200.11 ?

I have 2 of them, one was replaced by Seagate (advanced exchange $9.95), got it yesterday after it started to make knocking noises-- then quit all together. I also wonder if this replacement drive is going to be a creditable unit !! It's the same model but different firmware number

Are the replacement drives going to be better.....?

My other one (same 7200.11 HD model) doesn't get used that much as it's in one of my backup enclose cases But still run's fine so far, I'm worried now about it's long jeopardy and maybe should return it for replacement.

Does anyone know why these model drives fail ? I've been a Seagate fan for a long time.

Yep, there has been a bunch of agony associated with the 7200.11 drives. It was made worse by Seagate's initial reluctance to admit there was a problem; it left some bitter feelings with those bit by the ordeal. I believe Seagate had a five year warranty on the drives at the time the issue surfaced.

I never purchased one of the 7200.11 drives, so I cannot say whether a firmware update would absolutely correct the issue, but since you are not having any symptoms of the known issue in your backup disk, you might try applying the Seagate Firmware Update to the 7200.11. For many, the problematic firmware bricked the drive before the firmware could be updated.

Alternatively, you could contact Seagate about your concerns, but I do not know if they will accept it back if it has not failed due to the buggy firmware.

It is difficult to be comfortable using one of those disks for backups. I would pick up another external USB drive for image backups, and backup all data to another as well. Redundancy will be your best defense against data loss.

I'm going to give Seagate another call Monday and see if they will replace it --- as this drive doesn't give me that warm fuzzy feeling inside.

Your not the only one that Seagate doesn't give warm and fuzzy feelings about. I have a wonderful 750g 7200-11 HDD oops paper weight.
When I first saw them advertised on newegg they had a over 20% failure rate in the field. I worked for GM in paint department quality control for most of my 32yrs and when you have that high a failure rate in the field the product you have out there is junk. GMs goal was less then 5%. The Japanese was always less the 1%
When I saw that Seagate had a failure rate around 23% I contacted their tech support and asked them about it and they denied they had the problem. If you read last weeks Windows Secrets you read about the flooding in Thailand and how Seagates desktop HDD production were not affected cause HDD production isn't in the flooded area. They raised prices anyway. That is Seagates attitude. They only care about their bottom line. Go over to Newegg and look at the reviews that, that HDD series has now after the 2 or 3yrs that Seagate has had the 7200-11 on the market.
Seagate has let their reputation go to their head. Oh yeah they went from a 5yr to a 3yr warranty because of the 7200-11

Over the past 30+ years that I've been using hard drives, every company has had at least one model drive that got into production and out to the users, with some kind of problem.
In some extreme cases, the problem was so dire that it literally put the company out of business.

In early IBM AT's, there was a 30 meg drive (company UN-Named) that was dropping like flies in a forest fire. I personally replaced many of those drives with....you guessed it, a Seagate ST4038, 30 meg MFM drive. Those drives were as close to Bullet Proof as possible.
Since then, the only company that has really let me down as to drive quality, is WD.
I have a few WD drives that were given to me, when their external enclosures shot craps. I still use them, but NOT for anything important.

My main OS is on a 1TB Samsung SATA II drive and I'm testing Win-8 on a Seagate 500gig, SATA III drive, running on a SATA III (6GBM) controller card. One way I've eliminated HD failures is to keep the drives COOL. (HEAT KILLS)
At any point in the day, I can reach in and touch either of my two internal drives and they are cool to the touch, even when running hard doing a defrag or backup.

Each drive has its own 'Two-Fan' cooler attached. Both side panels are OFF on my desktop PC and there are a total of 11 fans, keeping all my hardware COOL. I've not had a heat related hardware failure in many years now, since I started fan-cooling my stuff.